I always played BM because I felt that was the 'real' hunter spec being able to tame exotics and what not. Couldn't be bothered with the other two specs. So as long as they don't fuck up MY spec then I'm fine with any changes.

Removing hunter melee abilities was a mistake. Change to focus was good, removing the min range for ranged attacks was awesome, but removing all melee abilities and our ability to equip melee weapons was stupid. It makes no sense and no "hunter" no matter how good with a bow or gun, would rely on just a ranged weapon. Adding melee abilities to SV hunters, so they are a combo of melee/ranged dps like enhancement shaman, would be ideal for making the three specs different.

Melee hunters never made sense. Logically, no one who could attack from range would ever get in melee range deliberately. Gameplay-wise, melee attacks were weaker than ranged. Making it as strong ranged and you compete with melee dps for slots and for people who want a ranged class it's a wasted spec/set of talents. You want to be a stealthy, melee class with poisons? Roll a rogue.

Speaking of rogues... Skilled Swordsman? That overlaps strongly with the brawler mechanically (a toe to toe melee fighter) AND with DPS warriors in both archetype and mechanics.

Both of your arguments really support my contention. Yes, we CAN force 3 specs onto the classes, but there aren't really 3 specs that naturally come to mind and that are distinct and that don't overlap with another class.

How about a raid wide Deterrence that deflects the next incoming attack and then fades away? That's not at all OP, is it? o.O

I actually thought this is what Camouflage was going to become in the beta when they allowed us to use it in combat, but it doesn't work much in PvE, if at all. Except on a personal level, not a raid wide level.

Obviously, it's not perfect, mostly off the top of my head when I posted it originally.

Make Deterrence baseline, give MM some perks to Disengage (Speed boost, distance. something cool) and also give MM readiness. it was theirs to begin with. Let them have it. Give MM mastery an +Bleed Damage component. Scrap Black Arrow completely, and replace it with a debuff akin to Rising Sun Kick (When this debuff is on the target, this target takes X% more Nature damage from you) BM, Why no swords? There are agi swords. We were able to use them Pre-MoP! (Note that currently Hunter's cannot equip maces of any form.)

Keep Frost and Ice Traps. They are really hunter bread and butter utility (how do you argue with a 30 sec AoE snare?)

Other than that, I could get behind your idea here..

Originally Posted by Winstonwolfe

In other words, he's worried about how sharp your bayonet is when you are firing RPG's.

Yeah you have a serious case of Rose Tinted Goggles. I played all though Vanilla, it was really fun some of the best time I had especially in PvP. However I'm not that blinded by my nostalgia to see the god awful design decisions that where implemented for hunters. Lets start with the obvious, mana, having mana back then was awful. On long raid fights like Ragnaros for example you had to basically stand still doing auto-shots for a good minute to get enough mana to cast anything. Then there was ammo/feed pet mechanic which got annoying fast. You always had to have your bags half full, hunters where the only class in the game for a long time that could be rendered completely useless in a variety of ways. One last thing I wanted to add was the awful survivability we had if someone actually got us in melee range, like rogues. That said somethings about vanilla where really awesome, like rare pets having special stats which gave you a huge boost in dmg and pissed off casters to no end. If anything needs to be brought back from vanilla is the joy in actually taming a new pet instead of this standardized pet by species crap.

The above QQ basically proves that you are a bad player and nothing more. Here's why:

Back in Vanilla there were consumables that gave one MP5 (increased mana regeneration in combat).

In the above screenshot you can see my Horde Vanilla Hunter who has got the following buffs applied in preparation for the final ZG boss:

1. 2x Mana Oil on his two 1H Bone Slicing Hatchets http://www.wowwiki.com/Bone_Slicing_Hatchet.
2. Elixir of the Mongoose
3. +Mana elixir
4. +Mana Flask. The flask granted about 3k mana. My Hunter, with buffs and all, reached in this screenshot 6.3k mana. He never ran out of mana, not even in Ragnaros (MC).

Bad players (also known as "scrubs") did not use consumables, i.e. did not use mana oil, elixirs or flasks, and then complained that their mana ran out too fast. This was especially the case, apart from bad Hunters, with Shadow Priests, Elemental Shamans and Balance Druids.

I remember all this very well because I reaided extensively in Vanilla AND grinded Rank 11. It is not a shame if you didn't play Vanilla, however, if you didn't actually play Vanilla or if you were totally "new" back then, it's best if you leave discussion of Vanilla to veteran players who know what they are talking about.

Veteran vanilla player - I was 31 back in 2005 when I started playing WoW - Nostalrius raider with a top raid guild.

I want to keep my focus; I was upset at first when they changed it but not having to stop and drink to replenish mana is awesome. The only thing I want is some abilities to use less focus

Couple things that would make hunters a bit more desirable. Even good hunters have a hard time finding progression guilds, because why bring a 180k hunter to a fight when you can bring a Warlock, Boomkin, or Mage doing better AOE and Single target DPS.

- Expand focus pool to around 150 (to allow better management of shots and focus, we currently have such a narrow range to optimize dps).
- Add a bit of diversity to specs (I love that we don't have a dead zone, but why call a hunter a marksman, if he's able to shoot from 5 yards away)
- Give hunters a dot type AOE (minimal focus sting) that isn't range bound like multi-shot.
- Traps that are arrow based, not thrown like a hand grenade.
- Give either hunters are raidwide CD (pet or hunter based), that makes us wanted again, for especially 25 man raiding again.

Hunters don't need to be the highest DPS class, but putting a pure dps class under many hybrid classes, is just sad.

Removing hunter melee abilities was a mistake. Change to focus was good, removing the min range for ranged attacks was awesome, but removing all melee abilities and our ability to equip melee weapons was stupid. It makes no sense and no "hunter" no matter how good with a bow or gun, would rely on just a ranged weapon. Adding melee abilities to SV hunters, so they are a combo of melee/ranged dps like enhancement shaman, would be ideal for making the three specs different.

It could be fun to give hunters melee in at least one spec; there can be arguments made for both SV and BM, I suppose. I've been musing recently on the idea of Blizzard creating a new class or spec that would benefit from moving between melee and ranged combat. Give them a couple melee abilities, and perhaps add a charge that briefly buffs melee damage. Charge in, attack, then disengage to get back to the standard ranged damage. That could also be fun in PvP.

They don't have to give them melee weapons. All the damage can be based off the ranged weapon, and visually the hunter draws a pair of axes or swords. A glyph similar to the Glyph of Felguard can let transmoggers see the weapons they really like.

Remove ability to call pets and buff all damage to compensate.
Add an entanglement shot(snare) that can have near 100% uptime (in PvE)
Replace SS with a bleed dot.
Replace ET with an AoE spike/FOK type trap

Anyways that is a start, totally doable and it would be nice to have a petless ranged physical damage spec.

In the above screenshot you can see my Horde Vanilla Hunter who has got the following buffs applied in preparation for the final ZG boss:

1. 2x Mana Oil on his two 1H Bone Slicing Hatchets http://www.wowwiki.com/Bone_Slicing_Hatchet.
2. Elixir of the Mongoose
3. +Mana elixir
4. +Mana Flask. The flask granted about 3k mana. My Hunter, with buffs and all, reached in this screenshot 6.3k mana. He never ran out of mana, not even in Ragnaros (MC).

Bad players (also known as "scrubs") did not use consumables, i.e. did not use mana oil, elixirs or flasks, and then complained that their mana ran out too fast. This was especially the case, apart from bad Hunters, with Shadow Priests, Elemental Shamans and Balance Druids.

I remember all this very well because I reaided extensively in Vanilla AND grinded Rank 11. It is not a shame if you didn't play Vanilla, however, if you didn't actually play Vanilla or if you were totally "new" back then, it's best if you leave discussion of Vanilla to veteran players who know what they are talking about.

Remove Focus Fire.
Make Frenzy stack from Kill Command stacking up to 5 times.
Make Lynx Rush baseline for BM
Remove (or at least seriously reduce) cooldown for Lynx Rush and BW and have Lynx Rush and Bestial Wrath interact with Frenzy stacks in some way. Either the more stacks = longer BW/Lynx Rush or more stacks = more damage per hit. Both abilities will need at least 1 stack of Frenzy though.

So, BM spec becomes more of a combo-shot spec similar to rogues or feral kitten. Those are just basic shots abilities that I've thought of quickly - I'm sure there's others that can be used to build up combo points and spend them in BM (Glaive Toss - builds them, Barrage - spends them?)

For Survival - I'd drop Black Arrow and instead make this more of a 'dot' class. So, Immolation Shot (pure Dot), Poison Shot (applied weakened blows debuff), Icy Shot (weakened armor debuff) as well as Serpent Sting and Widows Venom with an extra 'envenom' type ability which consumes all dots on a target when applied for a big damage burst.

In the above screenshot you can see my Horde Vanilla Hunter who has got the following buffs applied in preparation for the final ZG boss:

1. 2x Mana Oil on his two 1H Bone Slicing Hatchets http://www.wowwiki.com/Bone_Slicing_Hatchet.
2. Elixir of the Mongoose
3. +Mana elixir
4. +Mana Flask. The flask granted about 3k mana. My Hunter, with buffs and all, reached in this screenshot 6.3k mana. He never ran out of mana, not even in Ragnaros (MC).

Bad players (also known as "scrubs") did not use consumables, i.e. did not use mana oil, elixirs or flasks, and then complained that their mana ran out too fast. This was especially the case, apart from bad Hunters, with Shadow Priests, Elemental Shamans and Balance Druids.

I remember all this very well because I reaided extensively in Vanilla AND grinded Rank 11. It is not a shame if you didn't play Vanilla, however, if you didn't actually play Vanilla or if you were totally "new" back then, it's best if you leave discussion of Vanilla to veteran players who know what they are talking about.

We could also feign death + drink some water (regen mana) ^^ But yeah, I never really had mana issues ! But... I'd rather have focus than mana.

I read a few of the pages, but may have missed if someone else posted anything similar to this. I think it would be fairly easy to make hunters rotations more interesting, and to make them scale better with at least some stats.

Just make haste cause SS to tick faster ( I may be completely blanking on this, but I do not believe haste currently improves our DoTs? ) and have its crits proc a 100% crit chance for Arcane Shot for 5-6 seconds. Better scaling with haste and crit and more attention would have to be paid to Focus. The recent 10% AP buff would probably have to be reverted for balance. I realize it does nothing to reduce spec homogenization, and it would probably be not be a great solution for MM. Which wouldn't matter, I don't think Blizzard cares too much about MM currently.

Remove ability to call pets and buff all damage to compensate.
Add an entanglement shot(snare) that can have near 100% uptime (in PvE)
Replace SS with a bleed dot.
Replace ET with an AoE spike/FOK type trap

Anyways that is a start, totally doable and it would be nice to have a petless ranged physical damage spec.

Sadly that would hurt 10 mans so badly that no hunter would be allowed to run MM (unless they were the raidleader themselves in which case they are bad). Almost any 10 man relies on the pet to apply a certain buff or debuff to the raid. They'd have to somehow make the hunter able to tailor what buff/debuff they want to apply in order to compensate.